This invention relates to a method to continuously anodize a plurality of aluminum articles or pieces. Further, the anodic coating uniformity and quality is exceptionally high.
Over the years many methods have been tried to automate the anodizing of aluminum articles and/or improve the quality of the oxide coating. These methods have had varying degrees of success. For examples, U.S. Pat. No. 3,079,308 discloses a system for continuously anodizing sheet aluminum but this process cannot anodize piece parts. U.S. Pat. No. 3,592,754 overcomes the problem of non-uniform coatings but the disclosed apparatus is cumbersome and not suitable for high volume automatic continuous anodizing. U.S. Pat. No. 4,089,756 discloses another method in the attempt to automate piece part hard anodizing. This process requires several individual anodizing tanks which must be electrically isolated from each other.